Survival horror meets “Alice in Wonderland”

Based on the survival horror video games by Capcom, “Resident Evil” is the first film in the series directed by Paul W.S. Anderson.

It stars Milla Jovovich as Alice, a woman who wakes up in a mansion she has no recollection of and meets Matt, played by Eric Mabius. They soon get ambushed by a military group working for the Umbrella Corporation.

The group of commandos leads them into an underground base known as the Hive below the mansion.

Led by One, played by Colin Salmon, his team tries to discover what happened to the group of scientists inside the base.

After half of the team is sliced and diced by the Red Queen, the facility’s artificial intelligence, the remaining disable its power, unknowingly releasing a horde of zombies. Rain, played by Michelle Rodriguez, is the first of the group to be bitten by one of the undead.

While trying to escape the Hive, Alice slowly starts to regain her memories and realizes she was a security officer for Umbrella and planned on exposing the company for creating the T-Virus, a manmade mutagenic experiment.

The film was No. 2 at the domestic box office on opening weekend and sparked the interest of production companies eager to capitalize on video game film adaptations. Soon after the release, “Doom,” “Silent Hill” and “Max Payne” all hit the screens at local theaters.

While not exactly a direct adaptation of the first video game in the series, the film does borrow elements and incorporates them. Aside from zombies, Lickers, a bio-organic creature, appear killing a few characters, and the Nemesis Program. The program is another bio-organic creature but set to kill specific targets. At the end of the film, we see it come to life.

While COVID-19 is a virus and the state of the world is in a pandemic, one can only wonder how much more interesting it would be if zombies were added to the mix.

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